Brix Smith Start

The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise is the extraordinary story, in her own words, of indie icon Brix Smith Start. A lead member of postpunk The Fall during their heyday, she spent 10 years with the band before a violent disintegration led to her exit and the end of her marriage with Mark E Smith.

Her story is much more than rock 'n' roll highs and lows. She grew up in a dilapidated pink mansion in the Hollywood Hills and was a Bennington classmate of Brett Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt, before finding fame in the industrial wasteland of Manchester in the 1980s. After leaving Mark E Smith she lived with classical violinist Nigel Kennedy and toured with the Bangles.

This is a story of constant reinvention, jubilant highs and depressive ebbs; a singular journey of a teenage American girl on a collision course with English radicalism on her way to mid-life success on TV and in fashion. Too bizarre, extreme and unlikely to exist in the pages of fiction, this story could only exist in the pages of a memoir.

Brix Smith Start is a songwriter and guitarist best known for her work with The Fall and The Adult Net. In recent years she has worked as a TV presenter and in fashion as the owner of a string of boutiques with her husband, Philip Start.